Of course we are led to believe Geithner is really a very smart bloke who knows what is going on, but something as simple s correctly completing his tax return was beyond his capability. I can never understand the democrats. Even President Clinton when he appointed Robert Rubin as Treasury Secretary (much of the deregulation came under his watch) he went into partnership with the devil. Washington now all but owns Citibank because as Chairman, Rubin went to Vegas with the company, thinking he could put into practice and take advantage of all the rules he created while he was President Clinton’s money man.

Bernanke to me comes across a boring Rabbi and I although he doesn’t speak gobblygook like his predecessor, I still cannot grasp where he fits into the picture apart from setting the interest rate. When it comes to that I am absolutely perplexed why credit card interest rates are now through the roof but Fortune 500 corporations can borrow money at 3%! With Barney Frank and Chris Dodd as the people’s representatives leading the way to make laws so America would never be held to ransom again by Wall Street, I have lost confidence in this administration’s ability to do the right thing by the American people. The posturing and grandstanding that takes place when the bankers are hauled in to answer questions by our elected representatives makes the gathering look like a pantomime with Hollywood writing the script! Nothing is ever going to change.

The first thing President Obama should have tackled was Wall Street and to date he has done nothing. In fact he employed two of the biggest crooks, tax dodger Tim Geithner and that Libertarian dirtbag Larry Summers who have done a masterful job of not only handing out over a $trillion to institutions which should have been allowed to fail (AIG, Merrill Lynch, Citibank, Bank of America et al) but worse after doing so, have sat on their hands and done nothing about regulating an industry which is so rotten and corrupt to the core. You see they are of the same believers as the biggest economic terrorist of all, the formerly hallowed Alan Greenspan.

The vast majority of Wall Street bankers and their backers are not Republicans or Democrats; they are Libertarians. Libertarians, by definition are close to Anarchists. They believe that government should have no toehold in any part of our lives, there should be no (or little at worst) taxes, and they espouse to allow a free and unregulated markets be the best judge of good or evil. Greenspan has been an unashamedly self confessed capitalist since the day he graduated from NYU. However he goes one step further, he is also a libertarian. How could a man so cynically opposed to every function of government, run the most important part of Washington, the flow and cost of money, as Chairman of the Federal Reserve for twenty years? How dumb we really are to sit back and allow successive Presidents since Nixon to be sucked in by the Wall Street lobbyists and continue, after this country is all but destroyed, to allow Libertarian terrorists not only control Washington from the inside but also continue to control Wall Street.

Ten years ago when President Clinton worked in the Oval Office he appointed one of the smartest D.C. lawyers, Brooksley Born to head CFTC (Commodity and Futures Trading Commission) a commission that was never given any clout because of the power of Wall Street. Very quickly after realizing Wall Street was running amok without any oversight, single handedly, this woman did everything to draw to Washington’s attention to the fact that the financial system was heading for a meltdown. In 1998, she appealed to President Clinton that derivatives and other similar financial instruments needed to be brought not only under closer scrutiny, but totally regulated. Led by Rubin, Greenspan and most Democrat and Republican senior politicians, she was rubbished and ridiculed at every congressional hearing. Clinton embarrassed at her refusal to tone down, finally fired her. Ten years on, excluding those Libertarian assholes led by Greenspan, Rubin, Geithner and Summers, every person then in a position to take note and act now must feel hugely guilty for the treatment meted out to her. Greenspan goes on to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom while Born disappeared into early retirement.

Save a few ineffective idiot Muslim zealots living in this country, the real terrorists who have been responsible for such collateral damage to America are the dirtbags on Wall Street, their buddies in Washington and those numbskull politicians who were so happy to buy into their bullshit. Bernie Madoff, was a mere peon in the greatest conspiracy in history and he received 150 years jail. Greenspan, Rubin, Arthur Levitt, a previous head of the SEC, Summers, and Geithner and many others should be publically hanged after being found guilty of destroying the very foundation of America’s financial system.

President Obama, you need to change direction here. Once the health care deal is done, focus on the things that are wrong within America and start setting about to clean this country up and you can begin by ridding it of corruption, greed and avarice at the top as much as possible. It may mean bringing a few of your own to justice but I don’t care. Every time I see that tax dodger Geithner on TV with those eyes that look like a deer’s caught in the headlights, he becomes the first guy I want to see breaking bread in clink! Let Greenspan share a cell with Levitt and Rubin with Summers inside Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Maricopa Jail. They will all look so cute dressed in pink and submissively taking orders being barked from the mouth of Sheriff Joe! Joseph McCarthy in the fifties would have been better off taking on the libertarians rather than the communists. Not one American can claim their lives were adversely affected by a fellow citizen being a member of the Communist Party, but 300 million Americans can attest to how their lives were irrevocably changed for the worse by libertarians.

Last week I mentioned 227 freighter aircraft, mainly wide bodies, are sealed up (protection from the hot sun and sandstorms) in the Mojave Desert awaiting their fate. Like the ships, is their latest port of call only temporary before they are scrapped for the metal and usable parts? Shipyards throughout Korea and China have no cargo ship orders on their books and when the last ships are delivered by the end of next year, Ulsan, South Korea’s shipbuilding hub, will soon resemble Glasgow Scotland and just like Glasgow, shipbuilding could well become an extinct industry. When the promoters of globalization figuratively forecast a “shrinking” world, after just a few years of experimentation, they had no idea it would literally take place!

Most major airlines have been teetering on insolvency for years. The first Gulf War nearly twenty years ago handed them their initial shock. Shipping Lines have been consolidating for the past thirty years with two maritime nations, the United States and Great Britain losing their fleets altogether. The world’s shipping lanes are dominated by five steamship lines. In less than a year, their balance sheets have gone from showing profits and good liquidity to where they now look exactly like their airline brethren. There is no question that if the current trends continue, Maersk will go the way of Citibank and become a Danish-owned government enterprise. The simple truth is transportation is hunkering down for different times ahead. China can bullshit us as much as they like, but those forty odd million workers they sent packing back to their families in far away places where rice has been tended to the same way for centuries are not returning to the industrial cities of the east. Those shuttered factories will scrapped, just like the 500 hundred ships moored between the Singapore and Malaysian coasts and the 227 plus planes rotting in the Mojave Desert of California.

The era of excess, particularly in the United States is over and the practically minded businessmen, such as transportation CEO’s are bracing themselves for changed times ahead and actually doing something about. They are also well aware as times do improve, nationalism, bolstered by a little protectionism, can only lead to less demand for shipping space. Capacity will continue to be reduced until matched by the supply of goods. For forwarders, we have one ray of sunshine on the horizon; as capacity shrinks rates will rise. The higher the rate, the better the margin and the more money we make!